Active braking or forward collision warning.....warning.

Well technology doesn't scare me as it does some. I would not buy a modern vehicle without all these safety items.
They aren't there to take away responsibility (and they cannot) or because owners are stupid, they're there because they can and do react faster than the operator and never take their eye's off the road like humans do.

I used to work on similar systems for aircraft. You'll notice they don't crash nearly as often as they did a couple of decades ago. It used to be that the main cause of aircraft crashes was pilots flying perfectly healthy planes into the ground (known as CFIT) - just like people crash perfectly healthy vehicles. Because of modern systems like new cars have, that is no longer the case.

One of my concerns as these become more prevalent is are they smart enough to avoid such unwanted interventions. Such as one of those left turns across heavy fast traffic where you need to gun it hard to jump through a minimal gap. It could be disastrous if the collision avoidance hit the brakes or chopped throttle partway through the maneuver.

I have mild dissatisfaction already with traction control on many vehicles. Step on it hard pulling out into fast traffic only to have the nanny chop throttle when it detects wheel spin, then the vehicle bogs instead of getting up to speed as intended. If there's sand on the apron or slick marking paint it's worse.

We have the FCW on an Acura RDX and have NOT had that experience. It has hit the brakes a few times, but nothing too extreme.
I wonder if the Ford system works better?? I have a new F250 on order with that function.

Sounds scary. Another attempt at the dumbing of human intelligence. Let the machine do it so us humans don't have to think or take responsibility. Nope, not for me. I want to avoid alzheimer's and dementia when I get old, so I'll keep using my brain!

The FCA collision avoidance is a bit of an over zealous nanny at times.

Grit dog wrote:
Seems appropriate here. Had an interesting experience with our new Charger yesterday with FCW and active braking.
In short, the car totally mis read a traffic situation and the 6 piston brembos stopped the car dead in its tracks...way quicker than the car behind us could have stopped. Luckily the driver behind us had given adequate (too much actually for city traffic) room in front of him, or that collision avoidance system would have 100% caused a collision.
Word of caution for anyone with newer vehicles with this system.

I have had those situations also with the FCA collision avoidance. Was there nothing in the path or did it just activate even though you had adequate distance?

Had a similar thing happen with our Challenger SRT. I had CC set and I was slowly passing a semi on the interstate in a torrential down poor. As my car got up almost even with the front of the semi, I was hit with a massive "bow wave" of water off the truck. The car read this as a solid wall and applied the brakes, which kept me in the wall of water until I pumped the accelerator.
That was a bit unnerving but I like the system and I'm glad it is so equipped.
On a similar note, the next truck I buy will have adaptive CC as well. If Ram doesn't have it I will buy the Ford.